Weird in Seattle: Want to tango with Larry?

Pausing for comic relief … It’s not every day you see a flier like this and hear it explained to you in the next five minutes.

Tango with Larry? (Mónica Guzmán/Seattle P-I)

All I had to do was look right. Inside the building behind this post on Western Avenue, its subject and about five colleagues were looking out their window at me, laughing.

“Every year a couple guys do strange things for my birthday,” Larry Cross said once I’d joined them in the first-floor conference room at Clark Design Group. “They’re nutjobs.”

Cross couldn’t remember when it all started. But this latest stunt made it clear that these “nutjobs,” former colleagues at Olympic Associates — where he worked for 25 years — aren’t going to let him off the hook just because he left.

“They tracked me down,” he said, looking a little embarrassed.

This year, he got off easy. Cross remembered when they posted “wanted” posters with his picture on it all over his neighborhood. Then there was the time they painted an abandoned billboard with his face and the words, “Happy birthday, Larry.”

“Every year there’s something,” he said. “I can’t even remember all the stuff they’ve done.”

The best thing about this year’s prank is that Larry and his co-workers have a front-row seat to people’s confusion.

While I was still jotting down notes, a woman walking by outside stopped to read the post. She must have seen us through the blinds, because she turned, squinted at the glass, then kept walking.

Back on the sidewalk, I gave her the short version of Cross’ story.

“Oh, I know,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I figured it out pretty quickly.”